WCGC is an affiliate of U.S. Chess Federation, Hawaii Chess Federation, Chess Express, Inc and Amercian Go Assoiation. The chess/go club combines educational and social activities. Members come to play, to learn, and to get together with old friends and make new ones. The players, no matter what their level of skill, experience, or age - speak a common language, and one that is often not understood in other areas of a person's life. The rivalries are friendly; the friendships are competitive.

Wednesday, June 28, 2006

Its been awhile since anyone placed any more information about Monroi. The World database is growing but for games to be added from a tournament a Personal Chess Manager (PCM) and a Professional Tournament Manager(PTM) & Monroi S/W are needed at the tournament in question. PCM's are not used by everyone and normally only few are currently used. It you look at the June 16 to 18 Las Vagas National Tournament, there is about 20 games at http://www.monroi.com per round so more than lightly there were 20 PCM's in use. The cost is probably a factor, but hopefully that will go down as Monroi becomes a more popular to be used in tournaments.

So to answer the question, what about the games that no PCM was used!? Well hopefully someone turned in the chess notataion sheet and then someone else will inputed into a computer and it will showup someday at Chessbase or other database. The World Database is only for those using the Monroi equipment both PCM and PTM and software. As any new system or equipment you got to start somewhere! And I'm sure more upgrades will be coming soon as Monroi becomes better known and then maybe another company may come up with a better system in the future or Monroi will keep improving their equipment.

For now the cheaper route is the good old pencil and paper, just be sure you have a pencil sharper handy and an eraser, and hope you do not get into time pressure and then not write the last few moves of a game.

Has anyone in Hawaii used a Monroi PCM, not yet but that is about to change, will it appear on World database? Not yet no PTM was purchase, plus who would want to see my games anyway at this time!

Cost is the main issue, but if you have a laptop or computer at home, or PDA, and cell phone these devices were all costly too! They are used to communicate and their prices have come down a little. Monroi has an idea to make chess games more interesting for everyone and to share these games not just in a database on the Internet but in realtime! I observe Hawaii's State Champion from 97, 98, 99 play Kong Liang Deng (2478) at the Las Vegas event even though I was in Hawaii. I believe ICC was offering this as well for the top 10 boards where do you think they were getting the chess notataion for these games in progress!

As a chess instructor for beginner's to intermediate this new tool will assist me greatly, Mahalo Monroi!

By the way pencil and paper work fine at a personal level and I will be teaching chess notation always to my students!